Open Letter on Implementing and Strengthening the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

To the heads of government of the top 25 greenhouse gas-emitting countries,

We urge you to ratify the Paris Agreement on Climate Change if you have not already done so, and to implement the measures necessary to fulfil the pledges you gave there without delay. Unfortunately, even if all governments implement the unconditional pledges they have made so far, global warming is still likely to reach about 2.7°C above pre-industrial levels. Therefore, much more vigorous action is necessary for a reasonable chance of limiting global warming to 2°C.

Furthermore, the Paris Agreement recognises that limiting global warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C ‘would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change’, and therefore governments meeting in Paris agreed that they would pursue ‘efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C’ (Article 2.1.(a)). Limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires even more radical and vigorous action.

Consequently, we also urge you to strengthen the pledges you have given, to put them in line with what is required to meet the 1.5°C target, and to implement the measures necessary to fulfil those pledges as quickly as possible. Such measures include accelerating energy efficiency efforts; rapid decarbonisation of the global energy and industry sectors; immediate removal of all fossil fuel subsidies; no new fossil fuel extraction projects or power generation plants; and urgent exploration, development, and scale-up of negative emission technologies.

There is no more time to waste. The longer the governments of the world take to implement more ambitious climate policies, the worse the effects will be, especially for the world’s poor, for future generations, and for non-human species. The failure to implement such policies swiftly would therefore be a shameful abdication of our moral responsibility.

We would appreciate hearing back from you with regards to your plans to implement the pledges you made in the Paris Agreement, and to strengthen those pledges in line with the 1.5°C degree target.